How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers
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Re: How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers
#2The piece is at least as much about how emulator design (can) differ between emulators for arcade machines and emulators for 8-bit home computers.
Home computer emulators need to be able to handle all the software you can throw at it, while an arcade emulator need to be able to handle on the single game ROM which ran on it. It doesn't need to handle subtle behavior of the hardware which never manifests in the game output.
(Of course, the situation is different for arcade machines which could take different ROMs.)
Re: How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers
#3I will forever wonder why 8-bit computers of the 80s didn't have more powerful video hardware. It's not that the technology wasn't available, since most arcade machines at the time had a lot more powerful graphics hardware than 8-bit home machines.
(I will also forever wonder why Sega's 16-bit console didn't have hardware sprite scaling and rotation, since that was the main attraction of Sega games at the time...)
I don't think it was only economic reasons, because I really doubt it would be that much more expensive to have a few tiled background layers, a few more sprites on the screen and a few more colors in a decent (i.e. not 16o pixels wide) resolution...
Re: How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers
#4I will forever wonder why 8-bit computers of the 80s didn't have more powerful video hardware. It's not that the technology wasn't available, since most arcade machines at the time had a lot more powerful graphics hardware than 8-bit home machines. (I will also forever wonder why Sega's 16-bit console didn't have hardware sprite scaling and rotation, since that was the main attraction of Sega games at the time...) I…
It's my understanding, that the reason why arcade boards were so much more powerful was because they were a lot more complex thus much more expensive to design, source components and produce in large scale.
More colors, background layers and sprites with slow CPUs and graphics chips in the 80s usually meant having several RAM chips to have multiple memory buses and parallel accesses to video memory and more video memory in KB. That's why arcade boards were usually very large and with a lot more components when compared to home computers and home video game consoles.
Sprite scaling was added to Sega's 16-bit console with the Mega CD, it probably wasn't included with the original console so Sega could beat the competition and launch it at a competitive price in 1988 before Nintendo could launch its 16-bit console.
Re: How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers
#5Great article. Wish he named some of those "obscure Eastern European computers". I know there are good communities around the Japanese microcomputers, the Sharp X1, the 8801, the 9801, MSX, MSX2, etc. http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/phpBB3/index.php?sid=88c8ee18...
There's some excellent games buried away on them. This series of books in particular is amazing:
https://www.amazon.com/Untold-History-Japanese-Game-Develope...
Anyone know what the author is referring to?
Re: How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers
#6I will forever wonder why 8-bit computers of the 80s didn't have more powerful video hardware. It's not that the technology wasn't available, since most arcade machines at the time had a lot more powerful graphics hardware than 8-bit home machines. (I will also forever wonder why Sega's 16-bit console didn't have hardware sprite scaling and rotation, since that was the main attraction of Sega games at the time...) I…
The first time I've got my hands on a Z80 clone it was like "my precious". For example AY-3-8500 was not unheard of but was unobtainium in every respect.
If you're considering clones in East Europe, I think the real reason was economic. It was useless to have a complex circuit when the devices were not available. For this reason, most early clones of Sinclair Spectrum used only 7400 series circuits around Z80.
Re: How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers
#7Great article. Wish he named some of those "obscure Eastern European computers". I know there are good communities around the Japanese microcomputers, the Sharp X1, the 8801, the 9801, MSX, MSX2, etc. http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/phpBB3/index.php?sid=88c8ee18... There's some excellent games buried away on them. This series of books in particular is amazing: https://www.amazon.com/Untold-History-Japanese-Game-Develo…
You can check out some of the East German 8-bit computers and games for them on my tiny emulator page https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/:
- KC85/2 to /4 these were 'original' designs, even though some ideas (like the pixel/color attribute RAMs) were inspired by the ZX Spectrum. A slower Z80 CPU (1.75 MHz) but higher pixel and color resolution (e.g. a 320x256 display, compared to the Spectrum's 256x192)
- Z1013 was a most minimalistic Z80 home computer sold as a assemble-yourself-kit (the only East German computer that was really available and affordable for 'normal people')
- the Z9001 (aka KC85/1, aka KC87) was somewhere inbetween the Z1013 and KC85/2 models
- the KC Compact was an East German Amstrad CPC clone, but without custom chip (the custom gate array was 'emulated' with standard chips)
The Soviet Union built a very interesting PDP-11 compatible 16 bit home computer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronika_BK), and impressive demos are still written for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_pdp1QSp70.
There were also surprising number of ZX Spectrum clones built in Eastern Europe because they didn't require custom chips, some of those designs also improved on the original Spectrum design (for instance a higher color resolution)
Bulgaria built an Apple II clone (and also built their own MOS 6502 and Motorola 6800 clone chips): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravetz_computers
...and there's probably at least a dozen more computer models I have never heard of :)
Re: How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers
#8The piece is at least as much about how emulator design (can) differ between emulators for arcade machines and emulators for 8-bit home computers. Home computer emulators need to be able to handle all the software you can throw at it, while an arcade emulator need to be able to handle on the single game ROM which ran on it. It doesn't need to handle subtle behavior of the hardware which never manifests in the game ou…
Not to mention that home computers had a different set of devices to handle as well - eg. cassette drives, floppy disks and later small hard disks - often with their own controllers which had to be interfaced with the system somehow (using isolated I/O on CPU's like the Z80, and memory-mapped I/O on others like the 68000).
Re: How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers
#9He made me smile when he says: "there’s very little information for Bomb Jack on the web"
hardware schematics, dumped rom, source of a working emulator... What do you want more ? :)
Re: How early 8-bit arcade machines differed in design from 8-bit home computers
#10Great article. Wish he named some of those "obscure Eastern European computers". I know there are good communities around the Japanese microcomputers, the Sharp X1, the 8801, the 9801, MSX, MSX2, etc. http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/phpBB3/index.php?sid=88c8ee18... There's some excellent games buried away on them. This series of books in particular is amazing: https://www.amazon.com/Untold-History-Japanese-Game-Develo…
You can check out some of the East German 8-bit computers and games for them on my tiny emulator page https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/ : - KC85/2 to /4 these were 'original' designs, even though some ideas (like the pixel/color attribute RAMs) were inspired by the ZX Spectrum. A slower Z80 CPU (1.75 MHz) but higher pixel and color resolution (e.g. a 320x256 display, compared to the Spectrum's 256x192) - Z1013 was a…
Ah, that's awesome! thanks!